


Drowning Without Water (but not actually)

by pillowcreek



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Character Death, Character Study, Gen, calling kepler warren for half the fic is really weird, honestly it's mostly just a character study, it's not really described but i'm gonna tag it just in case, so apologies for that, there's minor gore, tw for drowning/suffocation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-27
Updated: 2016-11-27
Packaged: 2018-09-02 16:06:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8673808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pillowcreek/pseuds/pillowcreek
Summary: Basically just a character study of Kepler, including what happened in 1987





	

**Author's Note:**

> Slight trigger warning for gore, as well as drowning/suffocation and death

Warren Kepler had always known that he would work for Goddard Futuristics.

Of course he had, what else was he supposed to do? The youngest son of two of its employees, he had  _ grown up _ with Goddard Futuristics. It was always the goal. In a strange way, it was always the dream. 

He grew up on a farm, surrounded by locked doors and  _ classified _ ’s, sometimes half the house unavailable to him because of all the red tape. It they had been any closer to the city, he would’ve gone crazy because of it, but farms had plenty of places to get into trouble. He sometimes wondered how his parents managed to balance the farm and their work for Goddard, but they never seemed to struggle. Sometimes it felt like the farm  _ was  _ their work for Goddard, like the time when the chicken coop was locked up and they couldn’t go in it for a few months. 

When he’s five years old, he gets tempted by one of the locked doors. There were strange lights shining from the crack at the bottom of the doorway, the whole room buzzing with a strange hum. He stares at the door for a minute, mesmerized, before trying the handle. Locked. Of course it would be, but his five-year-old self is disappointed. He tries to peer under the door, but couldn’t see anything beyond… well, the floorboards to the next room. 

“Warren?” 

He looks up to see his brother at the end of the hallway. Peter’s arms are crossed, a look of disapproval on his face. “What are you doing?” 

Warren sits up on his knees, a knot twisting itself in his stomach. “I was just looking…” 

His brother sighs, dropping his backpack on the floor. “You know you’re not supposed to poke around down here. If a room’s locked, that means Mom and Dad don’t want you going in it.” 

“I wasn’t going in though!” he protests. 

“Doesn’t matter. Looking’s almost as bad. Promise me you won’t do it again.  _ Especially  _ not when Mom and Dad are around to catch you.” 

The knot in his stomach grows, forcing its way up into his chest. The thought of his parents finding him messing with the locked doors terrifies him, especially because their disapproval didn’t just restrict itself to disappointed looks and sighs like Peter’s did. “Okay.” 

“ _ Promise  _ me.” 

“I promise.” 

The locked doors continue to tempt him, even when he starts going off to school with Peter. He wants to know what’s behind them, push past the red tape and see the secrets that his parents have hidden away. He hates not knowing things. 

He keeps his promise to Peter though, and puts his annoyance into more traditional venues. He works hard in school, trying to get better and better scores. His parents are pleased when he’s tested as gifted, though admittedly less pleased when he still seems to have relatively little understanding of science and needs to work even harder to do well in those classes. 

When he’s ten years old, he goes to get a drink of water. He’s halfway through his math homework and the numbers have started to blur together in his mind. He’s only just grabbed a glass when he hears it: a high-pitched whirring, coming from down the hall. He doesn’t get the chance to go see what it is, only the chance to turn around and face the explosion that knocks him off his feet. 

When he comes to, there’s a sharp ringing in his ears. He’s aware of a sharp pain in his right hand, but that’s overwhelmed by the pounding of his head, worse than anything he’s ever felt before. He tries to open his eyes, but the movement hurts, and he’s faintly aware of a voice telling him to stay still, everything will be fine soon. He feels himself slipping back into unconsciousness again, but the aching in his head doesn’t fade.

He wakes up in a white room, one he’s never seen before. There’s wires hooked up to him, and the pain in his hand has left, replaced by a bandage that looks like someone shoved a snowball onto his hand. The pain in his head has subsided slightly, but is still there, pounding away at his temples. 

The door to the room opens and a man in a black suit enters. He has neatly cut brown hair and pale skin, a wide smile on his face. It’s not a kind one though, it’s too terrifying for that. Warren tries not to be frightened by him. It’s hard not to be, as he looks like he might skin him alive. 

“Warren. I see you’re awake then. I’m Mr. Croft, I work for Goddard Futuristics. You know of us, right? How are you feeling?”

He weighs his options. On one hand, he could tell him the truth. He feels like something’s trying to break its way out of his skull, like he’s about to be sick. He’s not sure how this man would react to that though. Would he be understanding or would he slap him? He looks like he might slap him. 

On the other hand, he could lie. The pain might not get better, but it also wouldn’t get worse. He was strong, he could handle some pain. 

Some horrible, skull cracking pain. 

“I’m fine.” 

The man laughs and he nearly wets himself. That is… not a normal laugh. He sounded like he was near hysterics, about ready to punch Warren. Maybe he should have gone with Option Number One… 

“Are you now? Because our scans of your brain waves are very interesting.” He rests his hands on the base of the bed, leaning against the plastic slightly. “Do you want to change your answer?” 

He feels terror welling up in his throat and tries to push it down. What happens if he lies again? What happens if he  _ tells the truth? _ He decides to stick with his first instinct and protect himself. “I’m fine.” 

“Really now? No pain?” 

“Not much.” If not much means that you’re about to vomit from it, that is. 

“Interesting. Well, I’m sure you won’t mind answering a few of my questions now, would you Warren?” 

_ Please don’t let them involve thinking too hard.  _ “Sure.” 

Mr. Croft’s smile looks predatory now, like he knows exactly what he wants and exactly how to get it. “What year is it?”

It takes him more effort than he thought it would to come up with the number. “1986.” 

His grin widens. “Really now? What day?”

The pain in his head increases the more he tries to remember. “October 14th?” 

There’s another burst of laughter and he feels the terror taking over him.  _ What is it, what’s so funny? _

“I’m sorry, but… Did your parents tell you to say that?” 

“No, I… Where are my parents? Are they okay?” 

“Why wouldn’t they be?” 

“There was an explosion, and- ah!” He clutches his head, the pain overwhelming him for a minute. When it clears, he can see Mr. Croft grinning at him, pleased. 

“So you remember the explosion? Interesting…” 

“You know about the explosion? What happened?! Where are my parents?! Where’s Peter?!” 

“Calm down Warren, it’s alright. Your family’s fine. You seem to be the only one who was hit.” 

He grits his teeth, trying to keep back tears. The pain’s overwhelming, but he needs to push through. That’s what his parents would tell him. “What. Happened.” 

Mr. Croft walks over to one of the tubes connected to his arm and fiddles with the dial. “Oh, nothing you need to worry yourself with. Get some rest, you seem to be in a lot of pain. I’ll send someone by later to explain what you’ve missed.” He laughs again, but this time it’s softer, like it’s coming from further away. “And you’ve missed a lot. About a year, in fact.” 

He doesn’t get the chance to fully register what was just said before he slips away into unconsciousness once more. When he wakes up, he’ll learn about how the explosion was simply one of Goddard Futuristics’ machines going off by mistake, that his parents had been looking after for the time being and it wasn’t supposed to detonate, that he had been hit by it and lost a  _ year  _ of his memories. A year of his life gone in seconds. 

(Years down the road, when he’s working for Goddard and knows how they do things, he’ll wonder if the machine detonating had been an accident or not, but for now he’d stay in ignorance.) 

When he’s fifteen years old, Peter joins the Goddard Deep Space Program. His brother’s absolutely beaming when he tells them the news, their parents responding with excitement and pointed looks towards Warren. He congratulates his brother but can’t help but shrink slightly from his parents’ looks. Now that Peter’s got everything figured out and is working for Goddard, he’d be expected to know what he’s doing too before long. Even though Peter got almost ten years more to think about it than him. 

He goes to sit outside after dinner’s over, hoping to get away from thoughts of the future. He only gets a few minutes of peace before Peter follows him out.

“Hey little brother, you alright?” 

He can’t help but scowl slightly. “I’m fine, Peter.” 

He can hear the smirk on his brother’s face as he sits next to him. “You don’t seem fine. Mom and Dad giving you a rough time again?” 

“It’s nothing.” 

Peter sighs. “You know people can’t help you if you don’t talk to them.” 

He bristles. “I don’t  _ need _ help.” 

“Sure, and you didn’t sleep with a teddy bear until you were thirteen.” 

He turns to glare at his brother, who only laughs. “Relax!” 

They sit in silence for a couple of minutes before Peter speaks up again. “Look, I know Mom and Dad are hard to deal with, and they’re even harder to deal with when you’re the only one around, but… You’ve only got a few years left to go. And then you can get out of here.”

“What, and join the Air Force like you?” 

“Not if you don’t want to.” Peter shrugs. “I knew I wanted to go to space. Joining the Air Force seemed like the quickest way into the deep space program. Choose whatever’s the quickest way to whatever you want to do.” 

“And what if I don’t know what that is?” 

“Then… I don’t know, try something out?” 

“Thanks for the  _ wonderful  _ advice.” 

Peter laughs and the sound of it echoes in Warren’s ears for the rest of his life. Through all of his sixteenth year, working hard in school and watching his brother prepare to go off to space. Through the goodbyes and the launch and the months of wondering where in the universe he is. Soon he’d be orbiting around a star almost 6 light years away, living his dream and doing what he had always wanted to do. 

And then he’s seventeen and there’s a knock at the door. 

It’s two people in suits and they’re saying something about an accident, a space walk gone wrong, his visor broke and there was nothing anyone could do about it, and we’re very sorry for your loss- 

He punches a hole in the wall. How else do you deal with anger and pain and grief? 

He deals with it by running. Running as far away from his home and Goddard Futuristics as possible. Across the country, to a college that will teach him laws and loopholes and everything that is not space and a lack of air. He dreams of suffocating with nothing over his face, of drowning with no water, of the last thing he sees being flames. He stops sleeping. 

When he’s nineteen years old he stops running. There’s no point: no one can run from space. It surrounds Earth, the night sky a constant reminder of suffocation and death. He’s tempted to go back home, see if he can get a job doing whatever the hell it is that his parents do, but he resists. He can do better than that. 

So he stays where he is, studying the law and figuring out how to use it. He feels like there’s eyes on him constantly, watching to see what he does. At first he thinks it’s just the stress of long nights without sleep, of not doing much beyond studying and drinking until he can no longer think about suffocating. But before long he notices a man following him, from his apartment to college and back again. He thinks about buying a gun, but then remembers that he doesn’t know how to fire one. His fists will have to do. 

The next day when he heads out, the man’s standing outside his apartment, no longer trying to hide. He’s wearing the same sickly sweet smile that Warren associates with Goddard employees:  _ I’m going to pretend to be polite but we both know that I could kill you if I wanted to.  _

“What do you want?” 

“A chance to talk.” 

“Here’s your chance. Talk.” 

The man chuckles. “Not here. Don’t you know anything about our work? I thought you were the smart one.” 

He clenches his fist, holding back only because he wants to know what the hell this guy wants. He’s become more volatile in recent years and hasn’t cared enough to stop it. “Why are you here then?” 

“To arrange a chance.” He holds out a slip of paper to him, an address and time scribbled on it. “If you want to start using your talents for good, come. We need a man who knows how to get around the law.” 

He goes. He wondered at first if he should or not, if Peter would want him to. But then he remembers Peter smiling and telling him take the quickest route to what he wants to do. What else is he studying the law for, if not for a chance to help Goddard with whatever issues they’re having. An opportunity like this might not come around again. Goddard Futuristics didn’t take kindly to people who tell them no. 

He’s not sure what he was expecting, but it wasn’t this. It wasn’t joining SI-5. It wasn’t working outside the law to advance Goddard. It wasn’t blood and guts and even more pain and scars. But at the same time, what else could it have been? 

He begins to get a handle on his anger, learns to to control it, contain it until they needed it. His anger becomes a calm storm, brewing just below the surface, always threatening to break free but never quite making it there. 

He’s scared the first time he’s sent up into space. He wasn’t expecting to be, thinking that he had left that fear behind with the rest of them, but he is. All he can think of the first time void surrounds him is the glass of the window of the hull splintering and taking all of the air out in one foul swoop. It takes him a few months to get past that fear, but it still appears sometimes when he tries to sleep, slipping into his dreams and stealing his air. He avoids taking spacewalks as much as possible. 

He gets better, gets smarter. He doesn’t care about rank, not in the same burning ambitious way that those around him do, but he’d lying if he said that he wasn’t bursting with pride when he becomes a major, a mark that he’s gotten even better than before. He’d be lying if he said that he wasn’t thrilled to be told to find his own team, his own right hand. 

He didn’t expect to find it drinking in a bar and willing to spill his guts to a stranger, but what can you do? Jacobi’s smart when he’s sober, smarter than people give him credit for. He brings with him fire and ashes, and an increased sense of panic that he’ll be blown to pieces accidentally. 

But slowly, slowly, Kepler begins to trust him. Begins to see him as reliable. If he says that the explosion won’t reach them when they’re five feet away, then the explosion won’t reach them when they’re five feet away. And it doesn’t, until one time it does and Jacobi’s bleeding out, his left arm on the floor, and Kepler’s covered in his blood and can barely get him out in time. 

But he does. And everything’s okay. 

Things keep moving, keep going forwards. Before long they’re joined by Maxwell and things fall even more into place. She’s got a sharper tongue than Jacobi, but she comes through when it counts. He can trust her. He likes her. 

Realistically speaking, they haven’t been working together for very long - only a couple of years - when they’re sent to the Hephaestus station, but it feels like much longer. There’s a bond between the three of them, one that can’t be manufactured, that has to grow naturally, tempered with fire. But it’s there, and when they’re shot up into space he feels Jacobi take his hand, knowing that he doesn’t like the initial launch. Doesn’t like the first few weeks of a thin layer of glass being the only thing separating them from a breathless demise. 

The Hephaestus crew is… difficult. That’s the best way to describe them. They’re difficult. But they’re good people, and he wishes that things were different. That it wouldn’t come to having to kill them. He really did wish that. 

The worst moment is when Minkowski gets trapped and very softly says that they might have less time than he had thought, peering up at the four of them through a cracked visor. He pushes down the panic welling up inside him, pushes aside all thoughts of Peter realizing that his visor was cracked and he would soon die. He needs to be calm. He needs to focus. He needs to be here, not stuck twenty years in the past. He needs to get his people -  _ all  _ his people - back inside, alive while they still can be. 

When they’re back inside, all safe and sound, he pushes aside his personal feelings, slipping back into the character he had created to be able to do his job. Near death experiences and panic have never stopped him before and he’s not about to let them do so now. No matter how personal they were. They have a job to do. 

  
But later that day, after everything’s set up for the next broadcast, he can feel Minkowski’s fury from across the station and wonders whether dying in space, drowning out of water, with flames from a nearby star being the last thing he sees, was always the way this was going to end. 

**Author's Note:**

> Come talk to me on tumblr @pillowcreeks


End file.
